American Tire Distributors (ATD), the country's largest replacement tire distributor with 83 centers and 60,000 customers, is expected to be acquired by global private equity firm TPG Capital for roughly $1.3 billion. The distributor, whose prior owners include Berkshire Partners, Greenbriar Equity Group and Investcorp, had been planning a $230 million IPO and initially filed with the SEC on February 5th of this year. The Huntersville, NC-based company was founded in 2005 and booked $2.2 billion in sales last year (up almost 11% from $1.9 billion in 2008). It had planned to list on the NYSE under the symbol ATD with BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank set to be the lead underwriters on the deal. Other recent IPOs that were taken off the table due to similar private equity-to-private equity sales include supply chain software firm RedPrairie, which was acquired by New Mountain Capital from Francisco Partners, and frozen foods provider BirdsEye Foods, which was acquired by Blackstone from Vestar Capital Partners.
